The 8 Ball: Top 8 Takeaways From Night of Champions 2015

Top 8 Takeaways from Night of Champions 2015

Night of Champions may not have been the most spectacular card of the year, but it did avoid throwing any clunkers at us. The worst matches on Sunday were average. That really should be the WWE big event baseline. Fans have paid enough in terms of both money and time that they should get some satisfaction from the matches. Watchable and mildly entertaining isn’t all that high a bar to set. It felt like some attention got paid to every match at NOC. The combatants had clear reasons to be there (mostly title challenges) and every storyline moved forward.

I’m not saying everything was optimal, but it was professional. A lot of times watching Raw or Smackdown I get that “What in the blue hell?” reaction, but Night of Champions behaved like a straightforward wrestling card. Some people won, some lost. Some feuds ended, others ramped up. It delivered in terms of clarity. It would be nice if every WWE big event worked off the same playbook, where every match is there for a reason and the entire card is treated like it matters.

This week the Magic 8-Ball looks at the big takeaways from Night of Champions. Oddly, amidst reports that Vince McMahon is freaking over low Raw and Smackdown ratings (hint: people are tired of your predictable, unimaginative weekly product), the WWE seems to getting its act together when it comes to Sunday events. It’s not perfect by any means, but there are some encouraging trends/developments.

8. Lady Trouble

While NOC gave us a very good reason to be encouraged about the direction the WWE is heading with its women, Summer Rae’s shrill performance in the Dolph Ziggler-Rusev match called back to the catty histrionics of what should a bygone era. I’m not saying every woman in the WWE has to be Ronda Rousey knockoff. That should not be the case. The division needs diversity, and a character looking to get ahead thanks to her non-wrestling assets and/or one who likes stirring the shit is perfectly fair game. A female agitator is a viable career path. However, Summer Rae combines resting bitch face, shrieking and mean girl behavior into a particularly noxious mix. She doesn’t have Vickie Guerrero’s gift for the bombastic or Sunny’s smoldering sexuality. She’s just fingernails down the blackboard annoying. Fans also aren’t buying the Ziggler, Rusev, Lana and Summer Rae love rectangle. It feels fake. I mean, I know it is fake, but it has to feel real for it to work. AJ made her calamitous WWE fauxmances feel real because she was gifted at selling her character. If we don’t buy into the characters, then they’re just playing for fake stakes. Compare that to Ric Flair’s reaction to Charlotte winning the Divas Championship. See how much material there is mining something real? Unfortunately this cocked up love rectangle storyline has only served to bury whatever real relationship there may be between Rusev and Lana.

7. Kane!

I suspect my reaction to Kane closing the show was the same as most of you – rolling my eyes and thinking “No way this ends well.” With the benefit of a few days to process it, I can see where it could make sense if Rollins ultimately gets a clean win where he comprehensively beats the Devil’s favorite demon. Will that happen? Maybe, though probably not at Hell in a Cell. Given the supposed hardcore nature of the event, we probably can expect a plunder-heavy mess, perhaps with a crazy stip attached. You know – a Kane match. Yet full credit to Creative/Vince/whomever if they let Kane drive Rollins nuts in the build to the match only for Rollins to snap and beat the tar out of him when the match goes down. That would be the kind of push the old warhorse should be giving to the new stud. I said this elsewhere this week, but if Sting can lose clean to Rollins, so can Kane. The difference is Kane should lose emphatically.

6. Brauny the Strowman

I am generally skeptical of titan class wrestlers. They move ponderously, have limited move sets and become tired acts fairly quickly. However, I was impressed by Strowman’s fluidity. He moves a lot quicker than his bulk would suggest. I don’t expect him coming off the top rope any time soon, but damn if he doesn’t have potential. He worked a healthy portion of the six-man match. Strowman probably doesn’t have big locker full of moves, but he throws a mean looking punch, gets up quick and moves around the ring with some athleticism. He is legit strong too. That puts him in rarefied air. Based on what we saw at NOC, the WWE should protect this guy, building him up as possibly the scariest dog in the yard. This guy is a real prospect. I’d say he should at least be able to reach the Umaga level.

5. Geek Ascendance

New Day and the Dudley Boyz did not have a great match at NOC, but they might have been the most entertaining segment of the show. Via New Day, the WWE accidentally has tapped into popular culture. As horrified as Freddie Blassie would be to see it, pencil-neck geeks have taken over. The top sitcom on television is the Big Bang Theory. Comic cons, cosplay, superhero movies, online memes and YouTubers are all mainstream. Horn-rimmed glasses and grandma sweaters are fashion chic. We live in a weird world and New Day fits right in. They defend tables, flash social media ninja skills and rock the trombone. I’m sure Vince and Creative are completely baffled by what they’re doing, but the way forward is to let them keep doing it. Give them free reign and they’re the next big faction. Of course they’ll probably get no farther than jobbers to the stars, but they’ve got Edge and Christian/Jericho and Ralphus/Blue World Order appeal. These guys are tapping into a pop culture vein the WWE does not know how to access. I’m looking at New Day as a key performance indicator for the WWE. If the company gets behind these guys and books them as a serious entity, then better days may come. If not, the slow circling of the ratings drain will continue.

4. Pro Wrestling > Sports Entertainment

For those of us who like professional wrestling, Night of Champions provided some encouragement. Nothing against Ryback, but Kevin Owens can wrestle circles around the Big Guy. Mind you, winning the Intercontinental Championship can be a monkey’s paw. Owens may do nothing but lose now that he’s won the belt, like Wade Barrett 2.0. Yet, for the moment, that prize is with a true prizefighter. Quality wrestling should ensue. Same basic situation with the Divas Championship. Nikki Bella wrestled probably the best match of her career, but anyone familiar with Charlotte’s work in NXT knows young Ms. Fliehr has superior ring skills. New Day has all kinds of ring chops. The WWE Champion, Seth Rollins, put on a goddamn wrestling clinic Sunday Night, and the guy who took the U.S. Championship from Rollins, John Cena, has been a wrestling fool this year. It’s too early to call it a trend, but suddenly the WWE is putting its belts around the waists of talented wrestlers. This could be nothing more than coincidence or a fad, but if it continues, if the way to win the shiny prizes is by excelling in the ring, then Vince McMahon will find himself running a pro wrestling company. That would be a good thing.

3. Do NOT Try This at Home

Scary moment when Sting collapsed in the ring. All the hype and makeup in the world won’t change the fact that he is 56 year-old man pushing his body beyond normal human limits. Wrestling hurts like hell. I don’t know how these folks do it. I’m not going on a full “It’s real to me dammit!” spiel, but this injury with Sting and Perro Aguayo Jr.’s death earlier this year underscore just how much they’re putting on the line in that ring. In the grand scheme of things, a buckle bomb is probably one of the less painful bumps you can take. Yet Sting either landed wrong or the accumulation of punishment (e.g. from the table spot earlier in the match) got to him, and now we’re wondering if his career is finished. If it is, he went out on his shield. He bumped way harder than a man his age should and they improvised a decent finish to the match so that Sting could walk away from the ring. If it isn’t, I hope he wrestlers in bubble wrap because, as a fan, one of my big hopes is to see more of these guys live to really old ages.

2. They Picked the Right Shield Guy to Push

Hard to throw enough superlatives at Seth Rollins. Yeah, he lost to Cena (and then lost again on Monday night). Yet booking can’t make you unsee what Rollins did in that ring. Rollins is the reigning, defending gold standard for the WWE. He might know every move ever invented. Unlike other guys where they run through a fairly predictable list of signature spots, Rollins whips out moves you could not possibly expect. The roll-through superplex on Cena blew my mind. In a just world, that ends the match, and on Monday night Cena kneels before Rollins and declares him King in the North. Even more amazing, Rollins worked back-to-back matches, carried the action in both of them, and it never once got repetitive. Amazing. Much as I like Dean Ambrose and much as Roman Reigns fits the WWE prototype, Rollins is special. The talent he put on display at Night of Champions, SummerSlam and Money in the Bank is prodigious. If the WWE is smart, it will make how good Rollins is one of its central talking points. The announce teams aren’t marking out for him nearly enough. During Sting’s interview on the WWE site this week, he gushed about Rollins’ talent. Seth is the guy. He just needs booking that befits his skills.

1. Era Shift

Charlotte taking the Divas Championship from Nikki Bella marks a major change for the WWE from girl fights to women’s wrestling. Again, Nikki more than held up her end of that match. Yet she’s symbolic of a divas era that got far, far away from in-ring action. Call it the Cheesecake Era. As of Sunday, I think that’s over. Out of the NXT test kitchen we’ve got a slew of women with ring chops. Charlotte set the bar high last year when she beat Natalya for the NXT Women’s Championship. Paige and Emma had done some solid work before that, but Charlotte-Natalya at NXT Takeover really was the match that kicked women’s wrestling in the WWE universe into a higher gear, both for its quality and the fact that it reached a much broader audience. Now she’s holding the Divas belt and expect her to be decidedly un-diva-like. She’s not there for two-minute catfights in the death slot before the main event. While there will be drama (because pro wrestling is a soap opera), Charlotte’s not going to be a crazy, shrieking bitch. On balance, she’s going to put on better women’s matches than anything the WWE has done since the heyday of Trish Stratus. As much fun as it is to mock hashtags, the #DivasRevolution actually seems to be headed somewhere. I think we’re going to look back at Night of Champions 2015 as the moment where the WWE stopped treating its women like girls.

I take requests.. The purpose of this column is to look forward. What could be? What should be? What is and what should never be? What would make more sense? 411 has plenty of columns that count down and rank things that happened in the past. This is not one of those columns. The Magic 8-Ball is here to gaze into the future. If there’s someone or something you think should be given the 8-Ball treatment, mention it in the comments section. I might pick it up for future weeks.